Graceless
by The Very Last Valkyrie
Summary: A conscientious objector, he won't help her cut. He knows who'll kill them all if he discovers another was first to know her secret. Chair emphasis but Dair interaction, no pairing hate please.


**Graceless**

He smells her perfume before he sees her, because it doesn't fit in with the more familiar scents of home cooked meals and patchouli candles and the shame, shame, shame of his novel going viral in the hands of gossipmongers before it's even been officially published. She has a pretty glow from the European sun – she's pretty to him, she always will be, but never in the same kind of way – and she steps tentatively over his threshold like the princess she's about to be, like she wants to scatter salt or chant or raise her dress above her ankles to protect it.

"Hello, Blair."

"Daniel," she says, because he's her ambassador in Dumbo and she has to be polite. Besides, they're kind of friends.

"How was Monaco?"

She wriggles her shoulders contentedly. "Grace Kelly chose well."

"And how's –"

"Humphrey." Her dark eyes are luminous, almost the same colour as his, but he can't quite see the light in hers. "I came here because I need your help, as we're…friends, and I bought you that tie from Paul Smith for the Pink Party and made you look halfway dashing."

He waits.

"What do you know about abortions?"

Dust motes are swirling in the light from the windows, since he's only just returned and hasn't had time to clean. He wants to offer her Dutch courage but that's hardly prudent, and that's also confusing, and how he wishes Blair was the kind of friend he could take out onto the rooftop terrace and drink lime spiked Coronas with to solve their problems – except this isn't his problem, it's hers, and why it's even a problem he doesn't know.

"You and Louis are…that's great news, Blair."

"Does it look like great news?"

"Well, you seem –"

"Please get there faster."

It doesn't take Dan long to join the dots, he's a writer after all, and this is a Russian tragedy or an unwritten Edith Wharton on a scale that could destroy them all. But he has to be sure, or else he'll be first up against the wall with a bullet in his skull.

"Is it definitely his?"

"Yes." She begins to pace, heels click-clacking. "Not only because the dates match up but because I get sick three times a day, and it shouldn't be moving by now but it is, and it's as much of a pain in the ass as its…fellow genetic contributor, and I've been having these horribly lucid dreams about –" A blush creeps up her face, and he turns discreetly away. There's Tolstoy on the shelf across from him, _War & Peace_. This child's parents stopped playing _Anna Karenina_ a long time ago, so he can't understand how something could be growing inside the body so near to him, though he knows his duty in this cold-hot war. He's not a general, he's a soldier, and he really doesn't need more people out for his blood. She's trapped but his handing her the key will mean death for them both, death from on high, death when Chuck Bass finds out Blair Waldorf killed his baby and Dan Humphrey helped her do it.

"No." He turns to face her. "I'm not helping you."

"Humphrey!" Desperation oozes out of her, eating up every other emotion, its aroma stronger and more recognisable than Chanel. "You have to."

"You do realise what Chuck will do if he ever finds out."

"He'll never have to find out!"

"As twisted as your relationship is or was, at least half of it is based on a weird ability to weasel the truth out of people. He'll find out, and not only will he be as hurt as he as a – person, entity? – can be that you didn't tell him or ask for his help first, but he will also be mad enough to destroy you and Louis. You need Chuck's help, Blair, not mine. You have to tell him."

"I could pass it off as Louis'."

"Blair, it's going to be be born wearing a bowtie."

It's snapped, the steel cable holding her spine straight, and so the heavy curtain falls from her face and she backs away from him. "If you won't help me, someone will."

"I think you'll have to go further this Bushwick this time. Don't you…don't you want it? Don't you care about it?"

The gloss on her mouth seizes, and so does the mouth behind it. Her pretty glow is no more. "Don't act like this a choice."

"Do you love him?"

But her back is broadside and chastising him as she stalks towards the door.

"Blair, do you love him?"

She turns back in the doorway, with those eyes he can't see the light in seeming suddenly shadowed in the crevices beneath.

"Don't act like this is a choice."

_Fin._

* * *

><p><em><strong>This is the only kind of Dair I will ever support, so please don't hate on their interaction<strong>** – and I'm pro-choice and certainly don't frown upon Blair for wanting an abortion, as is her right. What I **_**do**_** frown upon is the idea that because she's said yes to Louis, she has to be with him now, even though she said the only thing that matters to Chuck: 'I will always love you.' **_


End file.
